


Mass Effect: Instability

by Almost_a_Shadow



Series: Mass Effect: Resolution [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Dark Matter Plot, F/F, F/M, Mass Effect 3, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almost_a_Shadow/pseuds/Almost_a_Shadow
Summary: Were you ever so disappointed in something that the laws of space and time literally fractured? Four years after dealing with Mass Effect 3's horrible ending, I found myself on a plane to Vancouver. All I wanted was to see a concert and enjoy the sights. What I got was a life I never expected would be mine. (SI)(AU)





	1. Chapter One

Vancouver, 2016. As I stepped out of the airport terminal and onto the streets of the city, I laughed in joyful anticipation. The sky was so beautiful; I’m not sure about the rest of you, but nothing beats a nice gray sky and a cool breeze to encourage me to seize the day. Summer in Missouri was starting to become so depressing.

            I turned around and found my cousin Troy whooping, yelling “WE MADE IT VANCOUVER!” while his luggage flailed violently behind him. After five months of anticipation and planning, it was all finally paying off.

            Troy rushed me, letting his suitcase crash to the pavement, and we began jumping in a frenzied joy, at first firmly holding each other by the shoulders then increasing ourselves to adrenaline-fueled all-in-good-fun punches. I don’t even remember what we were saying—probably didn’t even know at the time—only that we were completely out of our minds having travelled to another country to see our favorite musicians.

            “Dude!” Troy said after we stopped jumping, throwing another light punch at my shoulder. “We’re about to see Being As An Ocean live in Vancouver!”

            “Being As a mother-friggin Ocean!” I returned, matching his intensity. We were both wearing our BAAO T-shirts we’d gotten at the first concert we’d seen them, back in Saint Louis, and had told anyone who commented on our apparel that we were going to Vancouver to see the best fucking band on the planet. This was the night of our lives.

            “All right, aright aright aright,” I said, calming myself and planning our next steps. “We gotta get to the hotel, get our shit put away, and hit a bar before we head to the show.” I started looking up and down the street. “How the fuck do you hail a cab in Vancouver?”

            “Probably the same way you hail a cab in America, dumbass,” Troy replied, sticking his thumb up in the air, staring up and down the street like I was, looking for a cab. A number of cars lined the streets, but no taxis as far as I could see. But we were in Canada; taxis could be pink Lincoln Navigators for all I knew.

            No one stopped on the curb for us.

            There was a car sitting at an intersection down the street that gave me a moment to pause. It sat lower to the ground than most cars, unless you drive a pimp-mobile, and the emissions coming off it were astounding considering I couldn’t see a tailpipe. It was cold outside, but not enough to freeze vehicle emissions like that. Besides, the gas wasn’t smoky, just that translucent boil that makes you think you’re tripping balls when you look at something bright.

            “Hey dude, does that car seem weird to you?” I asked.

            “We’re in Canada bro, they all look weird.”

            “Canadians drive the same cars as the rest of the world, moron,” I replied. Taking a closer look, I didn’t see any wheels and the shape of the car seemed out of place. The lines were all wrong, like they were from a different decade than any car model I’d ever seen. And being a mechanic I’ve seen just about every model there is. Maybe it was one of those really high-tech Euro cars, like the newest half-mil-priced Lambo.

            Then something happened. Very nondescript, I know, so let me try to do it justice. You know that feeling you have just before you realize you’re dreaming, when everything suddenly seems wrong? That’s realization hitting you that it’s all fucked up and that’s what helps you realize you’re dreaming. Your brain kicks into gear and tells you this can’t possibly be reality, because your memories enter your subconscious and you understand that none of this makes any sense.

            That’s about the feeling I had when I turned around and saw that the airport we had just exited was obviously not the one we’d arrived in. It stood massive, at least fifty stories high, and gave off more of an ivory tower vibe. The kind of place corporate executives and rich millionaires pay substantial money to inhabit. Definitely not an airport terminal linked to a runway with six planes ready to load up and fly out to their destinations.

            I turned to Troy only to see that he was staring at me. “Dude, are you real?”

            “What?” I asked, still trying to make sense of everything.

            “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

            _I’m dreaming._ It all clicked into place.

            “I think I’m the one having the dream.”

            “No offense man, but if anyone’s dreaming it’s me. This is friggin crazy.”

            I frowned. Was my subconscious projection of my cousin really trying to make me question the reality of my fantasy, or was he there with me? Like some Inception shit or something?

            “So you see it too?” I asked.

            “If by ‘it’ you mean the fucking hover cars, then yeah, I see it.”

            Hover cars? I looked to my right down the crowded street we’d scoped out earlier to find that the vehicles were indeed not touching the ground, but rather floating inches above it. The emissions vented from underneath the vehicle, which explained what I’d seen earlier.

            “What the hell is happening?” I asked no one in particular.

            “This is a trippy-ass dream,” Troy muttered, now looking at the sky.

            “It can’t be,” I said. “I’m definitely aware of what’s happening, so I know I’m real. And you actually seem to be you, so I think you’re real.”

            “Of course I’m real dude. Is this some Inception shit? Are you invading my dreams right now?”

            “How the fuck should I know dude? What the fuck is going on?!”

            Then I heard it. I suppose we both did—Troy seemed as real to me as I did, which punched a pretty big hole in the dream theory. But soon enough the thought fled from my mind as a thunderous shriek pierced the sky, so painfully loud we both covered our ears and sank to our knees. After several seconds we gathered the resolve to un-shield ourselves and look to the sky.

            The sight chilled my spine. With a flash of red light, a long, black metallic finger stretched down from the gray clouds and plummeted to the earth, knocking us on our asses despite the fact that we were already kneeling. Only when I gathered myself did I realize that it wasn’t just a finger, but an entire metal hand that had descended from the sky and crashed on our level.

            A Reaper!

            I couldn’t believe it. Had the flight attendant mixed some mushrooms into my meal? Put a bit of acid in my whiskey? Just my luck, the first time I get to visit another country and I’m imagining the opening act of Mass Effect 3, one of the most devastating moments in my video game history.

            “Is that a fucking Reaper?!” Troy screamed, both of us staring up at the colossus completely dumbfounded. It stood well over any of the buildings in the area, which was a feat considering that only minutes earlier those same buildings were giving me an inferiority complex.

            “What the fuck did that lady put in our food?” I asked, knowing any answer was self-evident. We weren’t hallucinating, we weren’t drugged, we weren’t asleep; no two people share identical experiences when impaired in any such way. Besides, in dreams (which was the most logical explanation) everything is chopped up and disorderly. While the moment was certainly chaotic and terrifying, I absorbed every detail of it with perfect clarity. Like thinking you’re drunk only to remember you barely had two beers. Suddenly everything you’re doing becomes real and you realized you fucked up by asking that chick at the bar for her number.

            I looked at Troy, and we both knew in that moment. We’d always joked that we were more like brothers than cousins—our minds worked so similarly—and we both knew what the priority was at that point. If this was real, if there was even a chance, we had to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

            “Come on!” I yelled, pushing myself to my feet.

            “Where?” Troy asked.

            “I don’t know dude, it’s a fucking Reaper invasion! What do you do in a situation like this?! Just run!”

            We took off, no direction, no rhyme or reason, just running because the Reaper was right the hell on top of us. I could hear weapons firing in the distance, see shuttles flying out to greet the menace only to be gunned down, but it didn’t become real until the massive death machine began priming its main cannon.

            The repercussion knocked us off our feet once more and literally deafened me. I fell to the concrete with a thud and rolled. The good thing about being six feet tall and 170 pounds is that you’ve got a bit of time to hit the ground once you’re airborne, and once you go down you can maneuver your body more easily to avoid as much pain as possible. Skills I had perfected being as reckless as I was.

            I groaned, loudly I thought but unable to hear any of it, and pushed myself to my feet. Troy heaved himself up in similar fashion and we both looked up at the Reaper’s target, the building adjacent to the airport. Or, what _had_ been the airport ten minutes prior.

            It seemed familiar, and when I saw the Alliance logo at the top of the building I knew immediately. It was the Alliance HQ in Vancouver. The same building Shepard starts out at in the beginning of game three. In fact I could almost imagine Anderson digging Shep out of the rubble at this very moment and them facing the chaos in front of us.

            Oddly enough, there was very little confusion in my mind. I suppose I’d played the games so many times that I was immediately able to make the connections once I saw them despite my brain telling me this was all delusional and impossible. I’d come to accept the fact early in my life that raving insanity just came with the job. Roll with it.

            “Are we…” Troy started, trying to catch his breath and put words to our ludicrous situation. “Are we living the plotline of Mass Effect 3?”

            I nodded. I’d like to say crazier things had happened, but no. They really hadn’t. We were in the Mass Effect universe. You have to understand, at that point in my life I hadn’t read a single fan fiction before. I assumed there were others like me who had realized how cool it would be to insert themselves into a game reality, but I never realized there was an entire culture around it. I thought I was one of the only people nerdy enough and who possessed the writing desire to even attempt such a thing. I never imagined that there were people who wrote about being dropped into the middle of Mass Effect; I certainly never imagined that something like that would actually happen to me.

            But somehow, as it always does, part of me had found the truth and accepted it before I had. My one instinct was to survive.

            To do that, I knew we had to find Shepard.

            “We’ve gotta get up there,” I told Troy.

            He looked at me as though I had grown horns. And wings. And had half a horse’s body. “Are you insane?”

            “Just entertain the fact that this is real. How the hell are we supposed to survive? Earth gets fucking raped, dude! Shepard’s our only shot!”

            “And if it’s not real?”

            “Then we’re having some kind of delusion and a cop will smack us out of it or something. Think about your options dude. Possibly get brutally murdered by Reapers and turned into some abomination of nature, or find out you’re delusional and sleep it off at the hotel. Which one sounds worse?”

            He had to admit that the possibility of getting massacred by a Reaper was way worse than being humiliated over a hallucination. I could see him mulling it over in his mind.

            The very fact that we were even having this conversation was insane.

            “Fine,” he said, mentally convincing himself. “Fine, let’s fucking do it.”

            I needed no further encouragement, jumping into a sprint as soon as we’d made up our minds. Beams of angry light fell all around us and explosions muted all other sound in the world, but on we ran, ever forward toward our salvation. Or delusion, I really wasn’t sure at that point.

            We reached the door in seconds—no I didn’t run track in school but I am extremely agile on my feet—and shoved inward. No effect. I pulled outward and, to my great dismay, nothing happened.

            “Access denied,” a female robotic voice spoke. Reminded me of Majel Barrett’s performance as the Starfleet Computer. “You do not have authorization to enter this facility. Please contact your Systems Alliance Civilian Liaison to request admittance to—”

            “Dammit woman, we don’t have time for this!” Troy screamed at the door.

            “The Reapers are attacking!” I added. “We need to get inside to secure Commander Shepard and Councilor Anderson.”

            “I cannot comply. According to the Alliance codes of conduct, section twelve paragraph thirty-two sub-section A14—”

            “Forget the regs!” I yelled. “We’re about to face planetary destruction if you don’t open this door! Isn’t there something in your army handbook about overriding protocols in desperate situations?”

            A detonation of some kind had us stumble to our knees yet again, but we were on our feet momentarily awaiting the computer’s reply.

            “Section thirty-four paragraph nine details procedures for overwhelming combat scenarios in which civilians may be granted temporary military status.”

            “Good, then under section thirty-four paragraph nine sub-section whatever I order you to open this door so we can do some fucking good here!”

            The voice went away. Fuck it all, there we were stranded on earth during a goddamn Reaper invasion and the jack-off computer was going to deny us access to the building. I bet Shepard didn’t have to deal with this shit. What am I saying? Of course she didn’t—she’s Shepard!

            A second later my anger turned to astonishment. The glass door slid open quite unexpectedly, and after only a moment of exchanging open-mouthed looks at each other, Troy and I rushed inside.

            The place was nice. Nicer than I’d have thought for military. Marble flooring, some sort of imported wood columns supporting the upper walkway, futuristic glass (maybe?) walls, all offset by a massive sculpture of the Alliance logo atop a bronze globe easily twice my height. Classy as fuck.

            “Dude,” Troy said, hitting me on the shoulder while looking off in the distance. “Elevator.”

            I followed his gaze and jogged over to the door. It greeted us automatically, ushering us inside, and closed the doors just as quickly.

            “Uh, computer? Are you there?” I asked.

            I was immediately answered by the same voice. Robots don’t lack for response time, at least. “I am the Alliance Headquarters’ VI assistant. You may call me Hannah.”

            “Uh, great, Hannah.” Weird putting a name to someone who didn’t have a physical presence. “Can you locate Commander Shepard and Councilor Anderson for me?”

            “Commander Shepard and Councilor Anderson are no longer inside this facility. They have exited through the main courtroom’s window on the seventy-seventh floor.”

            I glanced to my left at Troy. Seventy-seven? Damn this was a tall building, considering there had to be at least another forty floors above that. Not to mention rife with superstitions; I’d read once about a hotel that barricaded all the rooms and floors that had 66 and 77, especially the ones labelled 666 and 777, so what the fuck was stopping these guys?

            “Take us to the seventy-seventh floor then,” Troy said for me, knowing numeric superstition was not something I enjoyed involving myself with.

            Almost instantaneously the elevator lurched upward, but oddly enough it didn’t feel the same as the els I was used to. There was no pressure trying to cave my legs in, no odd motion-sickness, and best of all, no uncomfortable shove once we reached the top. Apparently elevators in this time period had received a considerable upgrade from the ones in Mass Effect 1’s day.

            When we stepped out I vaguely recognized the semi-reception area we were in from the game. This was where Shep and Anderson had talked briefly before the committee meeting, and where Ash/Kaidan had made their appearance.

            Bodies were everywhere. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dead body before; I guess most people have, wakes, funerals, etc.—but when you’re faced with the total annihilation of two dozen people…it gets to you. It’s not like they were just shot or stabbed or died of a heart attack in a way that killed them quickly. Their bodies were scorched. Before it ended they had certainly endured one of the most horrific deaths imaginable.

            We followed the trail of destruction, not even managing to cast glances at each other, until we reached the committee chambers. As one would expect, even more bodies thrown against the wall along with all the other debris. The impact of the Reaper’s shot had evidently been strong enough to shove aside anything it hadn’t directly disintegrated, making the entire room empty aside from the piles of wreckage and corpses lining the walls.

            Outside, through the shattered window, we could see the war raging. More Reapers had joined the first, spread throughout the city, and the Alliance was going at it hard. Too hard. They had yet to realize that this was a war of attrition. They couldn’t just throw everything they had at a handful of Reapers when there were hundreds more in space; they needed to hold back, focus on population extraction, and regroup to a central operations point to coordinate a plan of attack.

            No, if you’re wondering, I’m not a military strategist nor have I ever served in any military capacity. I guess way too many documentaries and video games showcasing overwhelming odds actually kicks in when you’re in that situation.

            Still, we had to focus on the matter at hand. Shepard, Anderson, Normandy. Though survival and getting the hell back to my own life was definitely the top priority on my list, I found myself thinking about all the things we could do to help with the war. Assuming Shepard knew as little as she did in the games (or hell, for all I knew it could be a he. I’d played as both) (s)he could definitely use the support.

            It was a ludicrous idea, but one that I could think about later. As I said, mind in the moment.

            I nearly jumped out the window to the ledge below, but Troy’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.

            “What the hell are we doing?” he asked. As he said it, he glanced from Reaper to Reaper, brows slightly raised. I’d seen the look before, on him and on myself. We really didn’t know what the hell we were doing; why we were chasing Shepard, why we were even here in the first place, why we believed any of this was real. We were living the plot of Mass Effect 3 for fuck’s sake! That shit doesn’t just happen!

            Still, I’d gone through this mental process half a dozen times already. There was no answer. We were just operating on instinct, flying autopilot, because that’s what seemed like the best course of action at the moment. Of course, I’d had my share of run-ins while flying blind, but this was different. This was something we truly had no choice in. The only action, however illogical it may have been, was to simply go with it and do what the smarter part of my brain told me to.

            I slapped Troy on the shoulder. “I have no fucking clue dude. But right now, that’s all we’ve got.”

            Then I jumped. Surprisingly enough the fall wasn’t as far as it had seemed. Surely the air was lighter with a Reaper just above us and fighters rushing through the sky as well. I don’t know the exact details of mass effect theory, but I read enough of the codices in the game and listened to enough dialogue to get the gist of it. Essentially, whenever something of sufficient mass powered by a mass effect engine lands in an atmosphere similar to earth’s, it either decreases the mass of the objects around it or decreases the mass of gravity itself, thus making us able to do cool shit like super-jumps. Which of those is correct, I haven’t the faintest idea. Also the fighters constantly swooping in probably had some effect on gravity as well, so there was that.

            So you can imagine it was with ease that we began running down the same path Shepard and Anderson ran down in the game. Each step seemed to carry us twice as far, and though we were moving at an increased speed, it wasn’t hard to keep my feet in front of me. You ever run so fast that your feet can’t keep up with the rest of your body and you face-plant into the ground? Luckily I’ve only done that in grass; God help the poor bastards who’ve done it on concrete.

            And luckily, that wasn’t the case here, although it was considerably harder to slow down. Also luckily, I wasn’t stupid enough to look down. Didn’t even think about it at the time. I don’t have any particular fear of heights, but knowing my clumsy self I could have easily fallen off that walkway, and even more so if I had realized exactly how far away the ground was. Although, now that I think about it, as light as gravity was it might not have hurt too much falling from that distance. Note the word might. I really have no clue how dense gravity really was, so more than likely it would have been similarly lethal. Falling speed compounds the higher you are, after all.

            So, with that lovely thought, I leapt to a ladder and heaved myself to the roof of what may have been a building connected to Alliance HQ. I really wasn’t paying attention to anything aside from the pile of dead Husks I recognized to be the handiwork of Shepard and Anderson.

            “They came through here,” I said, taking off in that direction.

            “So we really are living the game,” Troy replied, a mix between question and statement.

            “Well yeah, what’d you expect?”

            I could almost hear him frown. He was just as baffled as I was at our predicament. “I dunno. Alternate reality, horribly vivid shared nightmare, hell, I would’ve bet psychological torture if not for the fact that we’ve been shot at a dozen times.”

            I jumped down to the landing where the melee tutorial happens in the game. “I’m still holding on to the hope that this is some kind of simulation that’s gotten out of control. Like a glitch with one of those new VR gaming things.”

            “But then wouldn’t we remember that?” A valid point. “Far as I know, we stepped off a plane and into the Mass Effect universe.”

            “Yeah kinda shoots that theory to pieces.”

            We blew through the now-vacant building where Shepard performs the first heavy melee, sees the child for the first time, and has that brief chat with Anderson while crawling through debris. Seeing as all the Husks were dead and apparently another blast of Reaper fire had hit the structure, clearing the rubble from our path, it was considerably easier to make our way through.

            Then we passed outside again. The battle had increased in intensity, gunships of all sizes launching hit-and-run strikes against the Reapers, only to be blown out of the sky after an unsuccessful run. The spherical Oculi were also flying about, keeping Alliance pilots busy and occasionally stopping to shoot a red beam at the ground or a building, presumably where Marines or even civilians were holed up.

            I couldn’t believe it. There I was, twenty-one years old, in the middle of a full-scale planetary war. Despite having picked up a gun or two in my life, the sight in front of me took the life out of my breath.

            And then it just about took the breath right out of me. There was a split-second of almost earth-shattering silence, and then a roaring detonation that sent me flying a good ten feet to my left. The ground caved in under me as I went tumbling down, completely unaware of whether I was free-falling or sliding down the destroyed walkway. I thought I could feel my body slamming against something every now and again but was too disoriented to make sense of it.

            I’ve been told a have a moderately high pain threshold. Broke my arm once when I was a kid and still kept running around playing capture the flag until my gym teacher called me out on it. Been stabbed, sliced, and cut up so many times being a mechanic and never seemed to notice a thing until whatever I was working on became covered in blood. I still have scars all over my hands and numerous marks on my body, each telling a different story about how I was too thick-headed to notice I’d done something to injure myself.

            But hitting the ground after that fall, that was one experience I actually knew I was fucked. I hit the metal below with a sickening crack and all my senses faded. Couldn’t hear the war being fought in the background. Couldn’t smell flames or the stench of eezo polluting the atmosphere from the recently-destroyed frigate. Couldn’t taste the blood in my mouth, though I learned only minutes later it was there. Even my eyes, which struggled intensely to remain open, slipped into a state of half-functionality with gray rimming my periphery.

            Damn, I was a dead man. And with not even a cigarette in my mouth to alleviate a bit of the pain.

            Through what little I could perceive with my dying eyes, I saw Troy laying just next to me. Didn’t look quite as bad, at least I thought. He was managing to struggle weakly to his feet. I on the other hand just sat there immobilized, unable to even consider attempting to get up let alone actually try it.

            My vision faded. The gray took over the small sliver I could still see through and was immediately replaced by black.

            Only for a second. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me.

            When I came to again I was sitting upright, senses fully restored. The battle raged as ferociously as ever, refusing to relent for even a moment to allow me to regain my grasp on the situation.

            A medic—I assumed she was a medic, anyway—knelt over me with an omni-tool in one hand and an applicator of some sort in the other. The contraption spewed an almost foamy-looking substance onto my abdomen, which I only then realized was soaked in blood. Damn, and I was wearing my favorite BAAO T-shirt, too.

            “Dude, you’re alive!” I faintly heard Troy scream. I leaned to the left and saw him crouched cautiously behind the medic. About half a dozen Alliance soldiers were on either side of me, using the same hunk of metal I leaned on for cover. Shooting. Ducking. We were in the middle of a battle. Not just us in a massive, frenzied area under Reaper occupation, but an actual battle with enemies just on the other side of the metal.

            “Just hold still,” the medic said with a stern voice. “This might hurt a bit.”

            That was an understatement. As much as the fall had racked my brain with unpleasantness, the medic resetting my broken ribs hurt just as equally. I hadn’t even realized I was in pain until she began fixing me. Shock, more than likely. There was plenty of that to go around.

            And more on the way apparently. One of the Marines on my right fell back, clutching at a hole in his navy blue armor, and toppled in a heap to the ground. The medic quickly rushed to the fallen soldier, satisfied that I was no longer dying, but evidently didn’t hold much hope for him. She turned to the rest of the unit.

            “This position’s shit!” she yelled, picking up the fallen soldier’s rifle and spraying a few bullets.

            Another one, a tall colossus of a soldier, piped up, firing as he yelled. “Our orders are to get to evac shuttles and protect civilians, no matter what! Everyone get ready to roll out!”

            I wondered if that included me. I was in no position to move. The bleeding had all but halted and my abdomen felt considerably less constricted, but the medi-gel (at least I’m assuming that’s what it was) still needed more time to set in.

            On the other hand, fuck it. If this was a dream or some kind of weird experiment-gone-wrong, I would just wake up when I died. If not, at least I’d go down fighting like a boss in the Mass Effect universe.

            So yeah, fuck it was sounding like the better option at this point.

            I stood to my feet, nearly vomiting as I did so, but managed to keep it down and ran for the fallen soldier’s pistol. I don’t know what kind of adrenaline-fueled craziness had taken me over, but I had the gun in my hands and was blind-firing before I even saw our targets.

            Cannibals. Lots of them. Maybe a dozen, maybe two—it was a bit hard to count, lightheaded as I was. All I knew was that they stood in the way of me getting to Shepard and finding a somewhat plausible way to survive. And that the Predator pistol felt remarkably comfortable in my hands. I’ve shot a lot of guns in my day—cops in the family definitely has its privileges—but there was almost no recoil and the hair trigger made it surprisingly easy to squeeze off three or four shots before the enemy retreated. Usually three or four was enough given that they hit just the right spot.

            I vaguely heard soldiers yelling at me to “get the fuck down!” but ignored all of it. I took cover when necessary, fired when the timing was right, and took down enough Cannibals that after a few minutes they realized I might just be doing them some good. That or there was just no point trying to stop me. Even Troy’s much longer and profane tirades had died out to a mere “what the fuck” every now and then.

            The Cannibals were ridiculous. Easy to kill, but still, it took me a minute to figure out where the weak points were. Being Reaper drones a simple headshot didn’t do the trick, although a high-velocity slug from a powerful enough rifle like the Mantis or Widow probably would have worked. Instead I found where their armor was weakest: just below the right arm. The left was essentially a human corpse with a cannon at the feet, so shooting there was both disgusting and pointless. A bit of trial and error made that abundantly clear. Then again, in my state there was no way to even know if I was hitting anything aside from the debris in the background. With five other people shooting their guns in that direction it was impossible to know who was really doing the killing.

            Taking cover was also something I wasn’t used to. Of course I’d shot guns before, played a bit of laser tag and paintball in my day, but that’s different. Nothing lethal shooting back at you, so you don’t take it quite as seriously. In games you know as soon as the blinking light goes away or the next round starts you’re good to go again. In real life you have to listen to the shots, time it just right, and fire in coordination with you allies so as not to get hit. The Marines could take a blow or two, but I had no shields and no armor. All it would’ve taken was one bullet and I’d be down, this time much more permanently.

            Oddly enough though, it all came naturally. I suppose it was just adrenaline, the fight or flight instinct. Often enough we’re capable of things we don’t even realize until necessity kicks in and forces us to stretch our limits. Or, as I said, I could’ve been doing a completely horrendous job and was merely mistaking the soldier’s achievements for my own. Amazing how a severe wound can interfere with your perceptions like that.

            A few minutes later we seemed to be clear, a small pile of Cannibal corpses dead on the ground across from us. Though my chest and below was aching in pain, it almost numbed when compared to the sense of achievement I took at our small victory.

            Which was cut severely short by one of the Marines. Apparently there was a stereotype that I’d yet to understand.

            “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” This coming from the one who’d spoken earlier about their orders. They were all wearing full body armor and helmets so I couldn’t tell any difference visually, aside from the medic who was a bit smaller than her male counterparts, but I could hear enough of a distinction in their voices to know this guy had to be the leader of their unit.

            “Sorry sir,” I replied, “but you looked like you needed the help and we have to get the hell out of here.”

            “Do you know the punishment for civilian interference in a military operation?” the gigantor asked, another question along the “you’re going to get us all killed” track.

            “Not really.” Wouldn’t do any good to lie. “But in this case I don’t think it matters. We’re in the middle of a galactic war here, we need to get to Shepard and the Normandy before they take off—”

            “That isn’t even close to being an option. All civilians and Alliance personnel are being directed to evacuation shuttles to regroup with Alliance Command.”

            “Alliance Command just got incinerated when the Reaper landed,” I said. “And trust me, any evac shuttles you get in the air won’t stay there long. The Reapers control the skies, surely you must realize that.”

            I got a few bewildered stares from some of the other Marines. Yeah, I may not know much about military life, but I’ve played enough video games and seen enough shit go down that I know a lost cause when I see it. Plus, in this case I really had seen it. Duh.

            “How do you know all that?” the medic asked me. Wouldn’t have expected her to be the one to add to the conversation.

            “I…was on the streets below when the first wave landed.” At that point I motioned to Troy. “We went to the committee chambers to see if we could find Shepard or Anderson, but it was too late. The Admirals are dead. The Commander and Councilor took off in this direction trying to reach Normandy.”

            “Makes sense,” one of the others butted in. “With Normandy’s stealth systems she’s the only bird who could get in and out without attracting any attention.”

            “But why do you need to find Commander Shepard?” the medic asked.

            “Daniels!” the squad leader yelled. “All of you, this is ludicrous. We have our orders; let’s get our asses in gear and follow them. You two,” he said, taking special care to give Troy and I death glares. “Follow us. And no more interference.”

            “Can’t do that,” Troy said, walking over to stand beside me. “We’re going to find Shepard with or without you. If any of you want to survive, I’d suggest you do the same thing.”

            “Civilian! Come with us now, or—“

            “Or you’ll shoot us? The Reapers are going to do that anyway if we stay with you. Your orders are outdated. Shepard and Normandy are the priority right now.”

            Satisfied, he turned and began jogging towards where he thought Shepard and Anderson were headed.

            “I know how you guys feel about abandoning your mission,” I said, “but if there’s a time to screw your orders, it’s now.” And then I jogged off to join my cousin.

            No one followed us. I figured the unit would come after us if only out of a sense of duty to protect us, but the only footsteps I heard were the ones we were creating. I wished we’d put up more of a fight. Those guys were all dead if they stayed in Vancouver.

            The image flashed through my mind of the scene in-game where the civilian shuttle gets decimated by the Reaper. That little boy scrambling in only to get incinerated by laser fire. Knowing that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die here—possibly millions worldwide. I knew exactly what was about to happen and I was absolutely powerless to stop it.

            In that moment I think I fully understood what Shepard had been going through for the last three years. I mean you see the toll it takes on him/her in the game, but I never related so fully to the crushing weight on Shep’s shoulders until then.

            Still we kept running. Wasn’t even sure where we were going, only that some of the wreckage looked a bit familiar to what you see in the game. We were on the water now, leaping across gaps between chunks of debris that were somehow buoyant enough to float on the surface. Even as the battle raged overhead and the Reapers moved throughout the city, my mind was stuck on that one thought.

            _They’re all going to die._

“I think we’re here,” Troy said, snapping me out of my daydream.

            I surveyed our surroundings, noting that we were in fact very close to the position Shepard and Anderson had to hold until Normandy could reach them. I could almost hear the gunshots in the distance among the chaos of war all around us.

            We nearly redoubled our efforts to reach them when I heard footsteps behind us. I instinctively swiveled to get a better view, gun at the ready expecting another assault from Cannibals.

            Much to my surprise, it wasn’t anyone with such ill-intent. Two Alliance Marines, one of them I recognized as the medic who’d patched me up.

            If I hadn’t been clutching a severely wounded abdomen and confounded by the mass hysteria in the air, I would have smiled. “Decided to come along for the ride then?”

            “Not quite,” the woman said. “Couldn’t let a patient run off and get himself killed, even if he is being an idiot.”

            I did smile at that. “Well you’re in luck doc, because we’re almost there.”

            I turned and nodded to Troy, who took that as a signal to press on. Apparently while I’d been lost in my mental musings about the condition of this reality he’d found a rifle, so he led the charge alongside the soldier who’d accompanied the medic.

            The LZ was littered with Cannibal corpses and two dozen of the living things. Well, I guess as alive as one can be under Reaper control. Luckily they were facing south, presumably giving Shepard and Anderson all their attention and gunfire, whereas we were coming in from the west. As one the four of us opened fire, taking down three of them in as many seconds. Taken off-guard by this outmaneuvering on our part, the drones scrambled for suitable cover only to be gunned down from flanking fire. With four of us on their west flank, two on the south, and nothing but water north and east, the Cannibals didn’t stand a chance. No cover position offered them reprieve from our assault, and they were down in ten seconds flat.

            “Come on,” I yelled to the group. I would’ve done something cool and vaulted my cover, but the medi-gel still hadn’t fully settled and I was running on fumes as it was. Instead I had to opt for a more practical solution and jog around toward the platform overlooking the waterfront.

            I can’t even begin to describe how surreal it was seeing Shepard for the first time. She was a woman, by the way, something I’d had much speculation about. Seeing as the male Shep’s physical appearance was based on his actor, Mark Meer, that would have been way too freaky.

            She stood there, rifle in one arm and pistol on the other, looking as though she could take on the entire galaxy. In the games people always talk about how she has some kind of inspirational bad-ass vibe that simply suffocates the room, but I didn’t understand it until right then. This was the hero of the friggin galaxy, the woman who’d overcome insurmountable odds—including being killed in space and disintegrating in-atmosphere—and the one who was going to stop the Reapers. I’d never been so awed just by seeing someone.

            Anderson was Anderson. Not that seeing him wasn’t just as odd, but the effect paled in comparison to Shepard’s. That was when it all became real.

            I looked to the left at Troy, who was giving me the same questioning glance.

            _What the hell do we say when we go down there?_

The Marines had already started working their way down, so we followed suit. It would be much less awkward if they introduced us as just more civilians looking for extraction.

            “…just heading to our primary insertion point when our bird was shot down,” the Marine was saying. The one whose name, rank, or identity I knew absolutely nothing about. At least I knew the medic was a medic. This guy gave me literally nothing to tell him apart from every other soldier out there.

            “And the civilians?” Anderson asked, nodding towards us.

            The soldier sighed. “Found them after the frigate detonated. Daniels patched them up and they got a bit…overzealous in their efforts to assist us. This one,” and he made a point of gesturing to me, “said they had to reach you at all costs.”

            _Well, here we go._

            “What’s your name, son?” Anderson asked me.

            _Freaking David Anderson just asked me a question. This is so fucking fucked._

“Donovan,” I answered. “Donovan Womble. This is my cousin, Troy.”

            Troy nodded.

            “What was so important that you had to reach us?” Shepard asked.

 I couldn’t think straight. I was having a conversation with Commander Shepard and Councilor Anderson. I was in the Mass Effect universe, Reapers were attacking earth, I’d just shot and (possibly) killed several Cannibals, and I was having a conversation with Shepard.

            If I was on a bad trip, whoever made the drug was a fucking genius. Insane, but a genius.

            “Listen, Commander—” I began, but was cut short when a continuous gust of wind slapped my back and the sky began ringing with the sound of a huge engine whirring nearby. I guess at that point I was getting used to the sounds of mass effect drives.

            I turned to find the Normandy dropping down to the LZ. Not surprising, I had expected it any moment now, but still it took my breath away. I know not everyone is into ship designs—it’s a bit like cars. Either you’ve got a thing for it or you don’t—but the Normandy was truly a sight to behold in real life. The games didn’t do her justice. Sleek, aerodynamic, and shiny as all hell, with the classic NORMANDY SR-2 stamped on the hull. Couldn’t have been more beautiful if Cerberus had shelled out another million credits on her.

            I guess someone was on the comms, because everyone but Troy and I put a hand to one ear and stopped to listen. I’d always hated being left out of the conversation. Damn third wheel bullshit.

            Almost as if their movements were synchronized everyone’s hands dropped.

            “Come on,” Shepard said, gesturing to the group at large. “Everyone onboard.”

            “Ma’am? What about the civilians?” the medic asked.

            “We can’t just leave them now that they’re here. We’ve got the space.”

            I needed no more encouragement. With a bit of help from Troy I hopped up to the open cargo bay door and spun to make sure everyone else made it.

            Surprisingly, the medic and soldier were still groundside.

            “You’re not coming with?” I asked, mostly to the medic.

            “Our duties are to protect the civilians here,” she replied. “Besides, this is where the fight’s at.”

            “And how am I supposed to survive without a doctor treating me?” I really wasn’t even concerned about that; the medi-gel seemed to be holding and I wasn’t in that much pain. Just the thought of anyone staying on earth, especially when these particular two had saved my life, didn’t sit right.

            Anderson was still on the ground too, and he stepped forward just enough so we could all hear him. “You two get onboard,” he told the Marines. “Normandy’s got a skeleton crew as it is. They can use all the help they can get.”

            “But sir—” the soldier started.

            “That’s an order, Corporal.” I could tell even without really seeing their faces that no more incentive was required. Anderson was a war hero and a damn good leader. If there was anyone in the Alliance that held the respect of every last Marine, it was him. So the soldier followed his order without further question, helping the medic up beside us.

            “Come on Anderson,” Shepard said. “You too.”

            _Shit. Anderson._

“I’m not coming with you on this one, Shepard.”

            I could almost hear the “what the fuck are you saying” thoughts in everyone’s minds. I realized how Shepard felt about it in the game, but going through it in real life made me realize even more. I felt like a real piece of shit knowing I was about to fly off to relative safety while he and the rest of the Marines stayed on earth facing the most brutal odds in the history of warfare.

            “What are you saying, Anderson?”

            _Well, at least he doesn’t die._

“You heard them. These soldiers need a leader, and I’m the best they’ve got.”

            _Fuck. He does die at the end of the game._

“I’m staying with you.”

            _But that’s unavoidable, right? Can you change the future of a reality in which you aren’t even supposed to exist?_

“Talk to the Council. We need every species and all their fleets if we want to stand a chance against the Reapers.”

            _Yeah, and it still doesn’t make a difference. In the end it all comes down to some magic weapon the devs threw in because EA rushed the damn game into production._

“They won’t listen to me.”

“Then make them listen. Now go, that’s an order!”

            _Shit. Here it comes._

“I don’t take orders from you, remember?”

Anderson threw Shepard’s dogtags to her and the Commander caught them easily despite having her rifle in one hand.

            “Consider yourself reinstated, Commander.”

            The look in Shepard’s eyes…I couldn’t even hold my gaze for a few seconds. As terrible as I felt, I knew she felt a million times worse. She was leaving earth after three years of trying to prevent this, but more than that, she was leaving a friend knowing that in all probability he was going to die.

            She looked at the tags briefly, then to Anderson.

            “You know what you have to do,” he said.

            “I’ll be back for you,” Shepard said, her tone low and serious. “And I’ll bring every fleet I can. Good luck.”

            Anderson didn’t say anything in response. I didn’t blame him, knowing what he was about to go up against.

            Normandy began lifting off. With one last glance Anderson ran in the opposite direction, heading towards whatever fight he could find. With each second we rose higher into the air, passing a Reaper as we did so, seeing the war unfold below us. It was…it was horrible. I’m not what you would call a guy who has a healthy grasp of his emotions, but seeing everything unfold like that got to me.

            And then when I thought it couldn’t get much worse, it did.

            I followed Shepard’s gaze to a landing zone down on the waterfront where two shuttles were being prepped for takeoff. Soldiers escorted civilians to their respective shuttles, and in all the panic, no one noticed the little boy lost and looking for some sort of reprieve.

            I couldn’t watch, but at the same time it felt like it’d be a disgrace to look away. I just stood there, eyes glued to the scene as a Reaper came from beyond the corner of a skyscraper and took notice of the shuttles about to launch.

            _Don’t take off!_ I wanted to scream. I wanted to shoot. I wanted to jump out of the cargo bay, run up to the Reaper and beat my fists bloody against it. None of it would change anything. I couldn’t stop it.

            The shuttles launched. The Reaper primed its main cannon. Two beams, one per shuttle.

            They were gone. All of them. Including that little boy.

            _You fucking monsters._


	2. Chapter 2

SSV Normandy, 2287. My mind was reeling with the implications of everything that had just happened. Everything that _was_ happening. There I was, standing in the cargo bay of the fucking Normandy next to Commander Shepard, having just escaped the Reaper invasion and changing the course of history dramatically. As far as I remember, there was nothing that ever mentioned civilians getting picked up while Shepard escaped, let alone me and my cousin being two of those civilians.

            The only two, far as I could see. Anderson had been right: Normandy was manned by a skeleton crew, and one with more than a few bones missing. Shepard, Kaidan, James, and the two Marines who’d joined us were the only people occupying the cargo bay aside from Troy and I. Granted, there could be substantially more on the upper decks, but unlikely. They’d just opened the hatch in the middle of a Reaper invasion; any and all combat-able personnel should have been at that door ready to gun down whatever atrocities had beset Shepard and Anderson. As it was, we were the only ones there.

            I looked for Troy and found that he had the same confused face I imagined I was wearing. I couldn’t even begin to attempt questioning our situation because I didn’t fully understand what that situation was. Were we in some alternate reality where the events of the games were actually history? If so, was history as we knew it up until 2016 accurate? Once more, if so, did that mean we were in an alternate reality, or just the future, which would imply that the guys at EA and BioWare had somehow accurately predicted a full two hundred years of events they should have had no knowledge about? Confusing as hell and fucking wordy, I know, but at that point all my thoughts were jumbled into one continuous stream of _if_ questions.

            Regardless, all of these questions didn’t hold a candle to the big one. Was it possible for us to change things? That was the real kicker. If so (and bear with me, because these if-then questions are simply how I solve almost every problem in my life) how in the hell were we supposed to do that? As soon as someone started asking questions about us we’d be screwed. I’m as good a liar as anyone else—and better, if you ask any of my ex-girlfriends—but we were in the future! They could find out in a split-second that we had no business existing in that time period. Even our clothes were sure to give us away.

            I’m often surprised at how I ever managed to survive twenty-one years of life, as much as I overthink things.

            Shepard and her crew were already over at the comm station listening to Hackett’s new orders, so I gave Troy a questioning glance. Didn’t know if we should introduce ourselves or simply let the Commander do her thing. Hell, I was just hoping we hadn’t shattered the fabric of space-time simply by boarding the Normandy. Shit like that happens in Star Trek all the time and the side-effects are usually pretty singular: everyone gets fucked. Any more interference on our part might do more harm than good.

            “That was pretty courageous of you,” someone said, and I shot to my left to find who the voice belonged to.

            It was the medic, of all people. She and the other soldier had removed their helmets so I could finally get a proper look at them. An attractive young woman, early twenties maybe, long brunette hair and incredibly sparkly blue eyes. Odd. I thought soldiers were made to keep their hair short so it didn’t interfere with their field of vision. That and—no disrespect to the brave women who join the armed forces—you usually don’t see fucking models in the military.

            The guy, on the other hand, was the absolute epitome of military life. Lean, squared jaw, pointed nose that had been broken more than once, pale, sunken eyes, and a disposition that could have made a turian blink. Classic military buzz cut.

            “Uh, thanks,” I replied, not knowing if I should continue the conversation or not. Temporal paradoxes and all that nonsense.

            “That, or you had a krogan testicle implant,” the soldier added, a slight smirk on his face. Strange. I thought he’d be pissed about our little deviation from his mission parameters. Then again, they’d both followed us willingly to Normandy, so they had to have seen some small amount of merit in the plan.

            “To be honest I don’t know what the hell I was doing,” I said, taking a seat on a cargo crate because my abdomen was starting to ache. “I just saw the Reapers and thought I was gonna bleed out, so fuck it. Why not go down blazing?”

            “That shit was fucked,” Troy said, looking at the ground with raised brows. We’d seen some crazy shit go down in our day but this was easily the most horrifying.

            “Corporal Sorola,” the soldier said, offering his hand. I was too weak to offer a decent shake, but even had I been at full strength I think the Marine’s hand still would have crushed mine. Troy gave him a weak one as well, understandable given our situation. “This is Daniels, unit field medic.”

            “I believe we’ve met,” Daniels said, bringing her omni-tool to life. Weird as shit. In the games they never actually describe how omni-tools work—at least not that I know of—so it was a bit interesting to find that in the case of a soldier, it was linked to their armor VI and came to life upon a mere thought, courtesy of neural interfacing. Without the armor it functioned normally: a small wrist attachment that projected a holographic gauntlet allowing full user control.

            “Yeah,” I replied. “Wish it had been under better circumstances.”

            “I think that’s a given considering what we all saw back there. How are you feeling?”

            I grunted. Wanted to say something along the lines of _like a dying elephant that just swallowed an exploding giraffe_ but stuck with more practical conversation. “Like I seriously fucked something up.”

            She chuckled at that. “Could’ve been worse. You fell nearly twenty stories and managed to walk it off with only a few broken ribs and an abdominal laceration. A pretty severe one, but nothing that can’t be treated.”

            Right. Sure as shit didn’t feel like it. Hell, where I’m from it probably wouldn’t have been treatable. Based on the amount of blood I’d seen when Daniels first patched me up, it was a wonder my internal organs hadn’t spilled out of the chasm in my flesh.

            A few raised voices alerted me to the fact that Shepard, Kaidan, and James were arguing over at the terminal. I remembered bits of it from the game.

            And yeah, have I mentioned how strange it was to see Kaidan there? As far as I knew it was Ashley that seemed to be the preferential choice of surviving crew member, even as Fem-Shep, simply because Kaidan’s character was so underdeveloped in the first game. Hell, even when I played as male Shepard and romanced Liara I still killed Kaidan. Wasn’t until game three that I realized my mistake—the characters practically swapped likability between games one and three. In any case, it was strange, but I was definitely glad Ashley wasn’t around. I lost all respect for her when the character artists gave her fucking breast implants.

            “Doesn’t look good over there,” Daniels remarked. I turned to find that she had followed my gaze and was watching the debate unfold with just as much curiosity as me. “What do you think they’re arguing about?”

            As if on cue, and certainly not using his head, Troy answered. “Admiral Hackett and Councilor Anderson just ordered Shepard to leave earth and find a way to defeat the Reapers. We’re heading to Mars. Vega over there doesn’t like the idea of stranding everyone on earth.”

            I gave him an inconspicuous punch on the arm and a “shut the fuck up” look. It took a second, but then he realized his mistake and mentally told himself the same thing.

            “He has really good hearing,” I explained to the soldiers.

            “Gene mods?” Sorola asked.

            “Uh…” It doesn’t say much about my Mass Effect fandom that I had no idea what he was talking about. I did the second he explained it, of course, but having just witnessed a lifetime’s worth of real action in the Mass Effect universe some of the little details slipped my mind.

            “You’re not military?” he continued when I offered no answer.

            “Hah, not even close,” Troy answered.

            “Sorry, I just thought…when I saw the way you handled those weapons and how you worked with the unit…”

            “Just basic weapons training,” I finished quickly, not wanting to elaborate on exactly what we knew or how we knew it. “Nothing formal.”

            “Hm. Well too bad you didn’t have any basic medical training,” Daniels said, “otherwise you’d have known to take it easy with this much medi-gel holding you together.”

            “Is it bad?” I asked. It was only then that I realized she’d probably been trying to figure out the answer to that question for the last five minutes, but was having a hard time doing so at the rate the conversation was jumping around.

            “Like I said, not serious. But we’ll need to get you to a dermal regenerator. I’m hoping Normandy’s sick bay has one.”

            _That sounds really fucking bad. Only reason you’d need a dermal regenerator is because there’s so goddamn much flesh missing that they literally have to grow it back for you._

Shepard and the others had finished their conversation, I realized. It wouldn’t be long until we were headed to Mars.

            _Shit, Kaidan._

I still wasn’t sure if there was a way for us to dramatically change the future, but given that Kaidan misses half the war due to one little skirmish with a Cerberus AI, I had to at least try something. This could be the testing grounds, so to speak. A way to see if we could have any impact on the course of history aside from a minor side note about two civilians boarding the Normandy during her escape from earth.

            Mind made up, I was on my feet and heading to the elevator in seconds.

            “Where are you going?” Daniels asked. I turned to find her and Troy rising to come after me.

            “You said I need medical attention, right?” I asked. “I ain’t gonna get it by standing around here.”

            I caught Shepard’s gaze for the first time since talking to her back at the LZ. She was . . . surprised, maybe? Perhaps a bit shocked that a young guy like me dressed in what must have been outlandish clothes and a huge bloodstain on my shirt had the wherewithal to approach her after we’d just witnessed such a tremendous catastrophe. Couldn’t blame her. If I were in her shoes I likely would’ve had a similar expression on my face.

            “Commander Shepard,” I called out just before the door was about to close. Kaidan hit a button and the door slid back open.

            “I apologize, Commander,” Daniels said quickly, grabbing me by the arm and attempting to hold me back despite our noticeable size difference. “This civilian was wounded during the attack, he’s a bit out of it right now.”

            Seriously? That was how she was going to make it sound? Well, two can play at that game.

            “What the hell you talking about? I’m perfectly clear in regards to my mentality. I just need to talk to Shepard for a second.”

            Well, maybe I wasn’t going to play the game so much as throw the board aside and rewrite it.

            “It’s all right, Corporal,” Shepard said. “We’ve got time. What’s your name again?” she asked me.

            “Donovan,” I replied. “Womble. My cousin Troy and I were . . . taking in the sights when the Reapers attacked.”

            “I see. Caught a stray bullet? We can get you patched up in the infirmary.”

            “Yeah. Well no, they meant to shoot me, although this isn’t a bullet wound. Guess I looked like an easy target compared to the squad of Marines backing me up, but I gave a hell of a lot better than I got.”

            I swear I saw a brow raise, but in the games Shepard never really shows too much emotion. Apparently that translated to real life as well. James and Kaidan, on the other hand, were flat-out surprised.

            “You let a civilian fight in the most brutal war humanity has ever been in?” Kaidan asked Daniels.

            “They didn’t give us much of a choice, sir. We—“

            “It was our fault,” Troy interrupted. “We saw all the shit going down on earth and couldn’t just sit by. Might as well have guns in living hands where they can do some good.”

            No one said anything. Whether it was shock or frustration was anyone’s guess, but it was getting a bit annoying that everyone seemed to think civilians were completely useless. I mean, I know it’s the army, but really. Who the fuck do they think won the Revolutionary War?

            “Yes we’re civilians and yes we know how to use guns, why is everyone so surprised by that?” I asked.

            “Daniels?” Shepard uttered, both asking what the hell was going on and telling Daniels to end this little scene.

            “Sorry, Commander. It’s the medi-gel. His entire abdomen is pretty much made of it right now.”

            “Right. Get the civilians to the medbay. Do what you can to patch him up.”

            Whoo, talk about lightheadedness. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but standing to my feet must have flipped a switch. Felt like I was drunk on vodka, whiskey, wine and beer all at the same time. Bad disorientation, even worse hangover. I swear someone had set all the lights on the ship to disco setting; if they weren’t constantly changing colors they were strobing and the entire cargo bay was spinning because of it.

            Shepard and the others had stepped out of the elevator and in my haze I barely managed to realize I was being ushered inside. Still, I wouldn’t give Daniels the satisfaction of admitting defeat, and I had just enough clarity of mind to remember some of the shit that was bound to happen on Mars.

            “Kaidan!” I yelled as Troy and Sorola stepped in the elevator beside Daniels and I. “Watch out for the robot! It’ll beat the shit out of you!” My senses were slipping so quickly I could’ve been whispering for all I knew, but the stares I got from just about everyone in the room confirmed that I’d gotten the message out.

            Satisfied, I slumped over and passed the fuck out.

* * *

 

When I woke up—if you can even call it that; more like opening your eyes after getting too much smoke in them—I saw I was in the medbay. Classic Normandy; shining walls, shining floor, shining ceiling. The whole damn place looked like it was made of glass. Not regular glass, naturally, the glass you can look through and see a perfect image of the other side. More like the really cheap shit that reflects a very blurry version of what’s really there.

            Still, super shiny.

            My abdomen felt considerably better, and by that I mean it felt like my own flesh rather than some adhesive substance with healing properties. I checked to see if—yep. No shirt on. That explained why it was so damn chilly. Still had my jeans on and I saw what appeared to be my bag and hoodie on the floor beside me.

            I was lying on one of the medical tables. That made sense. Apparently the procedure had already been performed and I was just in recovery. That or something had gone horribly wrong and I was having an afterlife experience. My mind works in strange ways, believe me I know it.

            “Hey,” Daniels shot out from my right. I was getting more and more accustomed to her voice, believe it or not. “Looks like he’s awake.”

            She was talking to someone? Duh. Troy. I was still a bit groggy so I didn’t quite have the capacity to turn and look for them, but I knew Troy wouldn’t be far.

            Daniels was the first one to enter my fuzzy field of vision. Oh, so maybe that’s why the walls of the medbay weren’t very good mirrors. Or it could’ve been that they really were shitty, I honestly don’t remember at this point.

            “How do you feel?” Daniels asked.

            _Sweetheart, if you asked me that question any other time I would give you an honest answer._

“Better,” I replied. “Procedure went well I’m guessing?”

            She nodded, reviewing a datapad. She’d changed out of her armor and into a game three regulation Alliance uniform—would’ve been a bit odd walking around Normandy in full body armor—and damn but it was strange seeing the difference. For one thing she was about three inches shorter, still a good five seven if I were to guess, and a bit more . . . how do I put this delicately… attractive. Not that I was thinking about it like that at the time, I was just noticing the difference for the first time. Curiosity, I swear.

            “The new tissue grew in quite well all things considered.”

            I raised a questioning brow.

            “You did tell Major Alenko to watch out for a dangerous robot.”

            Ah yes. And now the unpleasantness was about to begin.

            I sat up and kicked my feet over the side of the bed, angling to find Troy. He stood just a few feet away at another bed, his face a mix of gratitude that I was okay and worry that I’d spilled a little too much in my medically-induced vulnerability.

            “You all right bro?” he asked, and he meant the question in more ways than one.

            “I’m good. How long was I out?” I asked neither of them in particular.

            “About an hour,” Daniels replied, walking from her position at the end of the bed to my side. Her omni-tool came to life immediately and she started taking scans. “Never used medi-gel before? Tends to have a bit of an effect on you if you’re not used to it. Especially when used in such a large quantity.”

            I chuckled. “Never had reason to before today.”

            “Well you’re in remarkable shape for a civilian, aside from your lungs. Smoker?”

            Heh. I always knew that was going to bite me in the ass one day. I’d just hoped that by putting off seeing a doctor I could live in blissful ignorance as to just how bad I was. And yes, I’m aware that smoking is a terrible habit and has become more of a taboo in our modern society than being in a relationship with an inanimate object. The way I see it, we’re all going to die at some point. Whether I die tomorrow or fifty years from now, I really don’t give a shit, so I might as well take away some of the stress with nicotine and enjoy however much time I have.

            “Yeah,” I replied. “Nasty habit, I know, but we’ve all got our vices.” Thankfully the liquor wasn’t so obvious. Or it could’ve been, but that was probably more commonplace in this day and age than smoking.

            “Mm-hmm,” Daniels grunted, eyeing the datapad. “No military training whatsoever? You’ve got the build, and obviously the predisposition towards smoking.”

“None,” I said. “Just like to stay in shape. Comes in pretty handy when, you know. Reapers are invading the planet.”

            That got a legitimate laugh out of her. Damn. Guess it wasn’t too soon after all.

            “Well, you’ll have to get them replaced if you want to live beyond thirty.”

            Wait—my lungs? What the fuck?! Was she telling me I wouldn’t have lived past thirty back in my time? Holy shit! Just…fuck!

            Apparently Daniels could see some of the bewilderment and absolute astonishment on my face. “Don’t worry, it’s a relatively simple procedure, and you’ve got time.”

            Fuck. If I hadn’t made it here, I would’ve been dead by thirty years old. Then again, I was likely to die much sooner in the middle of his war with the Reapers.

            Either way, Daniels didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I averted my gaze and found Troy again, eager to get off that line of thought. “You okay then?”

            He nodded. “Couple scrapes and bruises, mainly from that damn rifle. Thing kicks like a mule.”

            I smirked. Strange sidenote, ever since high school I never willingly smile. Don’t know why, don’t really care. The best you’ll get out of me is a smirk, probably just indicative of my wise-ass personality. Unless of course you say something absolutely fucking hilarious, in which case all bets are off and I’ll laugh my ass off. Otherwise, a smirk means I’m in good spirits and approve of whatever’s being said.

            “Awesome. So where’s my shirt?” I asked, standing to my feet and rummaging through my bag to find it. No luck. I grabbed my hoodie—a bit too big for me, which suited me just fine as it ran long down the back and made me feel like an Assassin’s Creed character—and pulled it on just to get Daniels to stop staring. I knew she really wasn’t, but the mere thought that she could at any time look over and see me half-naked wasn’t one I liked to entertain. Hell, despite being so damn good-looking I’m just about always fully clothed.

            There goes my sarcastic side. Sorry, I can’t turn it off.

            “That shirt isn’t going to survive quite as easily as you, I’m afraid,” Daniels said. “You bled about three pints into it. Even if we cleaned it out, it would smell like blood and dead flesh.”

            “I don’t give a damn, that shirt’s got sentimental value. If I’ve got to scrub it by hand with a toothbrush for the next ten years I’ll do it.”

            Daniels offered me a bit of my own medicine, a smirk with a note of acknowledgement behind it. She was catching on to me better than I’d thought.

            “I can’t stop you from taking it back,” she said, crossing over to a desk on the opposite side of the room and grabbing a black cloth, “but until then wear this. It’ll do the job and it’s not soaked in blood.”

            She flung the thing at me and only then did I realize it was an Alliance shirt. Not military, at least I didn’t think so. Just a regular T-shirt with the Alliance logo on back. It’d work for now, so I unzipped the hoodie, pulled the shirt on, and zipped up again.

            Okay, fully clothed, all internal organs checked out and flesh back where it should be, now…what the hell was next?

            Shepard. Kaidan. I had to find out what was happening on their end and whether or not Kaidan had followed my advice. I couldn’t remember exactly what happened between Kaidan and the AI—it had been a year since I’d played game three, after all—only that Vega forced the AI to crash, it approached Kaidan somehow and beat him shitless, then Shepard took it down. Hopefully my warning was both vague and clear enough to get the message through. Leave the damn AI alone, let Shepard do the work.

            And then there was the talk Troy and I needed to have about what the hell we were doing there and what the hell we were supposed to do now that we were there. We hadn’t been able to speak openly since we’d stepped out of the airport and it was starting to wear on me. I knew if we didn’t discuss it with each other it was bound to slip to someone else, more so than my little scene in the cargo bay.

            “Thanks Daniels,” I said, referring to the medical treatment and the shirt. “Can you give us a minute?”

            “Sure,” she said, looking at both of us curiously. “I’ll be in the mess hall when you need me.” With that she took off, and once again I have to marvel at how strange it was seeing a door open by itself. I’ve seen it in games and on TV before and even in buildings like Wal-Mart or something, but watching a door literally unlock itself by spinning a mechanism in the center and then slide apart all on its own was a sight to behold.

            But after that brief moment of interest, it was back to business.

            “Dude, what the fuck is—”

            I held up a hand quickly to silence him. Only by some miracle I remembered that EDI was probably still listening to everything we said. Hell, she was an AI. She probably didn’t even have to listen, it just came through whether she was paying attention or not. You know, if the phrase “paying attention” even means anything to computers.

            “EDI, are you there?” I asked.

            A beat barely passed before her voice responded. “I am everywhere on Normandy. Although I believe the more pressing concern is how you know of my existence.”

            “Trust me, that’s a concern to me too. Once Shepard’s back I’d like to have a discussion with her about everything we know. In the meantime, would you mind turning off the audio receptors in the medbay so my cousin and I can chat privately for a minute?”

            “It is already clear that you have knowledge no civilian should have. What is to prevent me from believing that you have ill intentions in mind and plan to further them?”

            “Really?” Troy asked. “We’re getting the stink eye from an AI. Oh damn, that rhymed.”

            Well, that was new. Suspicion isn’t really a concern for EDI in the games, aside from when someone deserves it like the Illusive Man or Udina. Being questioned by the most awesome AI in the known galaxy was cause for a bit of concern.

            “I just saw my planet and my people getting burned alive by the Reapers,” I said, a bit of anger laced into the solemnity. “I swear, we’re just going to have a personal discussion I’d rather not share with anyone else.”

            There was a moment of consideration on EDI’s part, during which I could almost see Jeri Ryan from Voyager nodding her head diagonally. For some reason I’d always imagined that if EDI were given a human body it would be Jeri Ryan’s.

            “Very well,” she finally said, although it really wasn’t that long a wait. “I am turning audio processors to the med-bay off. I will reactivate them once you leave the room.”

            I let out a breath. “Okay, now we can—”

            “Wait,” Troy interrupted. Apparently we were taking turns. “EDI, how do we know you actually did what you said you were gonna do?”

            No answer. We waited for several seconds.

            “Shepard’s hot,” Troy continued, no doubt baiting EDI into answering if she hadn’t done as asked. “Although some might argue you’re pretty hot too. You know, when you get your body.” Still nothing. “Joker wants to fuck you.”

            “I’m pretty sure we’re good,” I said, although I couldn’t resist a light smirk.

            “Yeah I think so. That or she’s just really good at holding herself back.”

            “Probably both. So um…” How the hell do you start a conversation like that?

            “Yeah. This is eleven different kinds of fucked up.” Troy began pacing the room, looking at the glass window to the mess hall beyond. Not many people in there aside from Daniels and Sorola.

            “How on God’s shiny throne did this even happen to us?” I asked, knowing neither of us had the answer. “I guess I’m beyond the point of questioning whether or not it’s real—I mean that wound was definitely very real—it’s just . . . this is fucking insane. If you’d told me that when we stepped out of that airport we’d be in the Mass Effect universe I never would have considered taking that flight.”

            Troy chuckled at that. “Who are you kidding, you know you would’ve gone anyway.”

            Huh. Well, maybe, maybe not. I mean, the chance to see the games unfold firsthand would’ve been an amazing proposition, but not if it meant never being able to go back to my friends and family. A life lived without loved ones is not only pointless, but heartbreaking. Besides, the war of ME3 isn’t the ideal game reality to find oneself living in.

            I think that’s when it hit me for the first time that I might never be able to go back. There was nothing to miss in terms of material possessions or a fascinating career, but the people I cared about . . . the thought of never seeing them again hit me like a cannonball to the chest.

            _So if all that has meant the most to me isn’t present after my last breath, count me with the fallen sheep and send me to the depths._

The lyric blurred through my mind. There was a line by Being As An Ocean that applied in just about every situation in life. In this case, the lead singer Joel was talking about loved ones who didn’t share his faith not being around in the afterlife. Dunno if you’re a religious type—I’m really not, I only believe in God and the law of love—but lyrics like those always stick out to me. The kind of thing I can relate to. Troy and I had had more than one discussion about what it would be like to have to live without our family and friends.

            In this case, it may actually be true. If we were really in the future and this really was our reality, they were already dead. If it were a different reality, the possibilities were endless. There may be an infinite number of variations of our loved ones, in which case they weren’t truly dead. Or they may not even exist in some realities.

            Damn, quantum theory can produce some interesting thoughts.

            “So what do we do?” Troy asked.

             I’d been wondering the same thing ever since the airport. Shook my head. “I dunno. I mean, do we tell Shepard? Do we try to stop what’s going to happen? Do we try to figure out how the hell we got here so we can get back? I don’t know what we’re supposed to do in this situation.”

            He nodded. Neither of us could even look each other in the eye, there was so damn much to consider. You ever feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders? In this case it really seemed like it was, because with as much as we knew about what was coming for Shepard and the galaxy in general, we could prevent a lot of bad shit from happening. Maybe even come up with a way to stop the Reapers that didn’t involve destroying all technology in the galaxy, merging synthetic life with organics, or merely assuming control of the Reapers.

           Heh. Assuming control. ME2 throwback.

           “What if we tried to make a difference?” Troy asked. My eyes found his for just a moment and he knew how crazy it sounded. “I mean think about it, you already started us down that road with Kaidan. I’m assuming that’s what you were trying to do, keep him out of the hospital for half the war.”

           I nodded, staring at the floor. “Yeah.”

           “So with all the knowledge we have about the future, doesn’t that mean we almost have an obligation to try and change some of it? I mean there’s some pretty shitty stuff that can be avoided if we just threw a little advice out here and there.”

           “But then you have to consider what we might do to the timeline. Think about it; yeah there’s some crazy shit that goes down during the war, but if it doesn’t happen exactly like that there may not be any chance to save this cycle from the Reapers. You watched Butterfly Effect, right? Even the smallest change can fuck things up pretty bad.”

           “Isn’t that a chance we should take? Be honest with yourself, are you okay with just letting things play out the way they do? Thane dies, Mordin dies, Legion, Anderson, Shepard—how can we just sit on our asses while all this shit goes down? Even if it’s worse, which I think we both know it can’t really get much worse, at least we’ll be trying to make it better.”

           Honestly, I couldn’t argue with him. I wanted to try as much as he did, but my more logical half kept voicing the same concerns on a loop. Temporal paradox. We might make it worse. There was no guarantee that we could even change anything in a significant way.

          On the other hand, what would that make us if we didn’t try? I knew Troy, I knew he was set on this plan no matter how many reservations I had about it. If you have the chance to save lives—billions of them, in fact—what kind of coward does that make you if you don’t take it?

          I shut my eyes, as much attempting to resolve the situation in my mind as to relieve the headache forming behind them. Another of my curses: chronic headaches, often advancing to migraines. Maybe there was some kind of treatment in this future that could stop all hell from breaking loose in my skull.

         “Okay,” I finally said. “We’ll see what we can do when Shepard gets back. If Kaidan comes back in one piece we’ll at least know we can have an impact on changing things. If not, we’ll try something else with a bit more direct influence.”

         “Like what?”

         “There’s plenty of things we can change bro. Once we leave Mars we’ll be headed for the Citadel. If I remember right, the Council basically tells humanity we’re on our own, but Sporatus offers Shepard help if she can find the Primarch on Menae. Then there’s Thane; Aria’s been forced to the Citadel because of Cerberus; Udina’s corrupt—”

         “Hold on,” Troy stopped me. “Udina?”

          “Yeah, what about him?”

          “When we were on earth we kept referring to Anderson as the Councilor, and no one corrected us. What if Udina’s not even Councilor? What if there are a few things different here than in the games?”

           Damn, he was right. Could’ve just been that everyone was still familiar with calling Anderson the Councilor, but unlikely. The Marines preferred calling him Admiral and only called him Councilor because it was necessary due to his status. What I mean is that if he weren’t Councilor someone would have spoken up and said so.

           Shit. What if there were some differences? What if all our information was inaccurate? Obviously not all of it was, because we knew where to find Normandy and that we were going to Mars, just like the game. Hopefully there were only small differences.

           Then again, Butterfly Effect. Small differences create larger ones down the road.

           “So the Cerberus attack,” I said, back to our discussion.

           “Might not happen without Udina.”

           “No, you know the Illusive Man, it’ll happen. He’ll find a way. Which means that until something happens to make us take a different course, we assume that everything is going to happen just like it does in the game and . . . I dunno. We take this seriously, like we would if we really were at war. Which, I mean, we kind of are now. We should come up with some contingencies or something.”

           Troy nodded, a brow raised in agreement. I hadn’t even expected the last part. Sounded much smarter than anything I should’ve been capable of coming up with. Made sense though. In a situation like this you don’t just walk into each moment blindly, expecting everything to go according to plan. You plan for the worst along with your plan A and hope that you don’t have to use the backup.

           I sighed. This was all getting so goddamn serious.

           “Let’s come back to this later,” Troy said, and I was glad for the suggestion. I knew my mind needed a break from all this heaviness.

           “Good idea. Everyone will be wondering what the hell we’re talking about in here.”

           “Should we tell anyone?”

           I shook my head. “No more than they need to know. We’ll tell Shepard, but let’s not mention that this all comes from a video game. Or that we’re from the past. We just say we know things very few people do—in fact some things no one knows but us—and that we can’t reveal how we know it.”

           Troy humphed. “They’ll probably treat us as hostile. They’re at war, for God’s sake.”

           “Probably. So we just show them that all we want to do is help. If we can achieve that the rest should come easily.”

           Another sarcastic chuckle on Troy’s end. “Because everything so far has been a friggin cakewalk.”

           I nodded. “Poor choice of words. But it’ll be doable. We just wait for Shepard, show her we just want to help, and roll with whatever happens. If they listen to us, awesome. If not, we try harder.”

          “Yeah. If they don’t label us traitors or lock us in an asylum for the duration of the war.”

           It was my turn to laugh. “You know we belong there anyway.”

           I think we both needed that moment. It really wasn’t even funny, but we still found ourselves laughing and the entire weight that I felt on my shoulders lightened considerably. No matter what was going to happen, we could do this. You might be thinking it was false bravado brought on by a few seconds of calm during the storm, and I would usually agree wholeheartedly, but the Wombles are a strange group of people. When we decide we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it. Even if that meant getting into a fistfight with a damn Reaper.

           After our conversation in the medbay we made our way out to the mess hall, where Daniels and Sorola sat eating something pasty and quite horrifying. And I don’t mean pasty as in color, this shit literally looked like toothpaste they were spooning into their mouths. I learned later that it was standard nutrient paste for Alliance soldiers loaded with everything one needs to stay healthy, but at the time I stared in disgusted silence as they gulped it down.

           “Have a nice chat?” Daniels asked, dropping the spoon and pushing her bowl towards Sorola.

           “Illuminating,” Troy replied, and we both took seats at the end of the table. “Where the hell is everyone? I know there’s just a skeleton crew on board, but this looks more like a bone crew.”

           “All essential personnel are at their stations,” Sorola said between mouthfuls. “Which, in this state, is pretty much everyone. We’re just waiting for the Commander to come back so we can get our orders.”

           “And us?” I asked both of them. “What do you think the Alliance will do with us?”

           Sorola shrugged, taking another bite of paste, so Daniels answered for him. “More than likely you’ll be dropped at the next Alliance-friendly port. Maybe Arcturus or the Citadel. Although…”

            I have always hated it when people attempt to lead the conversation. Sometimes when people end a sentence like that, I simply stare at them, letting them know if they want to say something they should say it rather than lure me into something I’m clueless about.

            In this case, however, I was out of my element and more than a little concerned about my identity being nonexistent in this reality. “Although what?” I hated myself for asking it.

            “It’s nothing, stupid thought,” Daniels replied.

            Have I mentioned how I hate this? Well, I hate it even more when people make you beg for something they want to say. Just fucking say it, for God’s sake! My reaction isn’t going to be any different if I ask for it rather than you telling it to me.

            Forget that, my reaction will be much different because not only are you an idiot, you’ve pissed me off simply by playing with the conversation.

            “Lay it on us,” Troy said, gritting his teeth just as much as I was.

            “I was just thinking, with your combat experience and how naturally you worked with the squad back on earth, the Alliance might actually benefit from having you with us.”

            Had Sorola not just swallowed his paste I swear it would’ve been flying out his nose. “Are you serious? You’re not—you’ve got to be kidding, right?”

            “Why?” Daniels retorted. “You saw them, they’re both good with a gun, they both know field procedure despite claiming they’ve had no training. We’re in the middle of a galactic war with the damn Reapers. I think we need all the help we can get.”

             When we decided we would try to help out with the war, I don’t think either of us had that in mind. I mean, let’s all be honest here. It’s great to fantasize about being a total badass hero of humanity and fucking shit up for anyone who gets in our way, but most of us don’t have the ability to make that happen. I sure as hell didn’t, and Troy was probably thinking the same. Before I’d stepped into the Mass Effect universe, sure, put me in Shep’s shoes. But now that I was here, I didn’t want to be anywhere near a battlefield. That shit’s intense, you can’t even imagine. I was quite all right with sitting on the sidelines feeding information to the good guys that would help them win. I had no intention of stepping into that role myself.

             “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?” I asked. “I mean yeah we know our way around guns, but there’s procedures, training, a bunch of shit we’re absolutely clueless about. Even if we did join the Marines, we wouldn’t be on the battlefield anytime soon.”

             I think a bit of reality sunk into Daniels’ eyes after my statement. Her brows shrugged and she grabbed the bowl of paste back from Sorola, to his dismay.

             “Still,” she continued, “it’d be a shame for talent like that to get cooped up in some apartment on the Citadel. You should talk to Shepard. Maybe she can keep you onboard for a while; train you until you’re ready to hit the field.”

             She just wasn’t getting the message.

             “Believe me,” Troy said, “we’ll be talking to Shepard as soon as she gets back.”

             “Oh really?” Sorola asked, a bit of a chuckle in his voice. “Because as I recall that was a very intelligent conversation last time.”

             I had to give him that one. Smirk. “I wasn’t at my best, I admit it. Thanks to our brilliant medic over here.” I gave Daniels a falsely annoyed look, which she returned.

             “Hey, don’t blame me. I can’t help it if you’re a lightweight.”

             Heh. First time I’ve been accused of that, actually.

             I was perfectly content to let everyone laugh, distracting them from the sliver of curiosity Troy had planted in them, but I was rapidly learning that nothing escaped Daniels’ notice. She seemed to be more aware of the fact that Troy and I were out of place than even we were.

             “You’re not from earth, are you?” she asked. One simple question with such a complicated answer.

             Honestly, yes. From earth, a hundred eighty years prior. And yet, honestly, no. This earth was no more familiar to me than the damn space ship I was flying in. Which, yes, if you think about it makes total sense, because the Normandy is familiar to me through the games, but so much was different. The essence of really being there can’t be captured in a game. Same thing with earth. It wasn’t the same place it had been when I lived on it. So . . .

            “No, we’re not,” I said. If I had to lie, I could at least be partially truthful to myself. “We’re from a small colony on one of the moons of Antirumgon. You?”

            “Iowa, born and raised,” Daniels said, lifting a glass of water I hadn’t realized was beside her in a toast.

            “Oh God, I’m sorry,” I blurted, a laugh escaping me before I could stifle it.

            “Why’s that?” Daniels asked, a knowing smile on her face.

            “Believe me, we’ve seen the vids and heard the stories about the Midwest,” Troy said. In truth, we had lived those vids and stories. “My heart goes out to all afflicted by it.”

            “What about you, Sorola?” I asked.

            “Rio,” he replied. “My entire life before I enlisted.”

            “Rio de Janeiro?” Troy asked. Then, when Sorola nodded: “Isn’t that where the N-school started out?”

            “They’re still there,” Daniels said. “Or . . . were. It’s only been two hours and I still can’t even imagine what the Reapers have done to earth.”

            Damn. Way to make a light conversation heavy as fuck. We all dropped our heads, not that anyone had planned to, but it just made sense. There were a bunch of poor bastards living through hell back there. Least we could do was wish them a few good words and the strength to kick some serious ass.

            “My granddad used to tell me stories, you know,” Sorola said, breaking the silence that had pervaded the room. “About N-school. He was N6 when he retired, almost made it to the top. Took an IED to the back, left him in a wheelchair.”

            “I’m sorry,” was all I could think of to say.

            “He was a damn good soldier. After the accident he went on to teach at the academy. Couldn’t run around with the recruits, but he was still a hell of a marksman and he gave them all a run for their money. Said no one but the best of humanity ever survived that place. There are fewer than a dozen N7’s active today, maybe only thirty N’s in total. So far Shepard’s been the only person in the galaxy to actually kill a Reaper. So if there are so few people who can do the job, why are we running? Why aren’t we staying to fight?”

            Fuck me in the sphincter. Definitely wasn’t expecting the conversation to go that direction. I thought he was leading up to some kind of happy remembrance of his granddad, or some hopeful monologue about how Shep would see us through this mess. Didn’t think I was gonna get that sucker punch to the gonads.

            I didn’t even know what to say, or if I should say anything. Sorola was moping quietly; Daniels was casting a somber glance my way, as if I should know what to say since I seemed to talk so much. Truth is, I’m an asshole. Sorry to disappoint, but there it is. I barely even know how to manage my own emotional state, let alone try to influence someone else’s in a positive way. That’s what Jesus and hippies exist for.

            Surprisingly enough, it ended up not just being a moment of total shittyness. Troy spoke, soft but stern at the same time, and I swear I’d never been more proud of someone.

            “We’re leaving because it’s the right thing to do. Believe me, I wanted to stay and kill every last one of those shits as much as you did, but that’s not an option. This isn’t a war we can win just by killing more of them than they do of us. They’ve got us completely outgunned to the point where if we destroyed half of their force we’d still lose the war. We can’t do this conventionally. We’re leaving because as much as it sucks, as much as we hate leaving everyone behind, we have to get help. We have to take the galaxy by storm and hit the Reapers with everything we’ve got. Not just humanity. Not just the Council. Everything and everyone. That’s how we win this war. Together, all of us. That’s why we’re leaving. Because Shepard is the only person in the galaxy that can make that happen.”

            Holy shit. I didn’t know whether to stand up and applaud or ask where the hell my cousin went. It was fucking brutal. Would’ve scored him +100 Paragon points in the games. In fact I could almost see a meme with Troy’s face and a caption reading exactly that.

            Even if Sorola didn’t agree, he couldn’t very well say that Troy was wrong. Plain and simple truth backed up his statement. Only an idiot argues with the truth.

            “Well, now that that’s resolved,” Daniels said, attempting to bring the conversation back from a much heavier place, “I think you two could use some rest.”

            Really? She was going to suggest a nap at a time like this? Damn this woman was starting to get on my nerves, and at the same time she had this way about her. Like she knew she was being annoying and was only doing it to have a bit of fun. Plus she was fucking always right, I was tired despite the short hospitalization. Hadn’t slept during the eight-hour flight (got delayed due to storms) and it had been a good two or three since, plus we’d departed at 10 am and I’d been up since six. No idea what time it was now, but since we were in space it didn’t matter. I’d been awake for around fifteen hours despite having been torn apart by metal and shot at by fucking Reapers, so yeah. I was dead tired.

            “That actually sounds like a good idea,” I said, knowing that I was going to regret agreeing with Daniels sometime down the road. She seemed like that kind of girl.

            “Good. You can take bunks in the men’s quarters. Shepard should be back soon, but it’ll still be some time before we reach the relay. I’ll wake you when we’re ready to jump.”

            Sorola stood up and offered to show us where the quarters were, but we both declined.

We knew exactly where they were.


End file.
